Oct 5 2012

From The Space Library

RELEASE: 12-345 NASA AERODYNAMICS LEGEND ENTERS AVIATION HALL OF FAME

WASHINGTON -- Aeronautics engineer Richard T. Whitcomb, whose legendary NASA research contributions made supersonic flight practical, will join other aerospace pioneers in the National Aviation Hall of Fame Saturday, Oct. 6. The National Aviation Hall of Fame, located at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, is dedicated to honoring individuals who have contributed uniquely to America's rich legacy of aviation achievement. In the past 50 years, it has inducted more than 200 of the nation's premier air and space pioneers, including the Wright brothers, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh and astronauts John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and others. Whitcomb, who died in 2009 at age 88, may not be as much of a household name as others in the Hall of Fame, but aerospace professionals say his role in aeronautics research is virtually unmatched. "During his almost four decades of federal service, Whitcomb's fundamental insight into aerodynamics and his practical solutions led to three of the most significant and practical contributions to aeronautics in the 20th century," said Lesa Roe, director of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Those three contributions include the area rule, supercritical wing, and winglets. Whitcomb spent his 37-year career at Langley, arriving fresh out of college in 1943. Nine years later in 1952, the young aeronautics engineer discovered and experimentally verified a revolutionary aircraft design principle that became known as the area rule. Whitcomb discovered if he narrowed the fuselage of a transonic airplane so it is shaped more like an old-fashioned soda bottle, he could reduce its drag and increase its speed without adding power. The area rule has been applied to almost every U.S. supersonic aircraft designed. The achievement earned Whitcomb the prestigious 1954 Collier Trophy for the most important aeronautical advance of the year. Whitcomb's supercritical wing revolutionized the design of jet liners in the 1960s. The key was the development of a swept-back wing airfoil that delayed the onset of increased drag, increasing the fuel efficiency of aircraft flying close to the speed of sound. In the 1970s Whitcomb came up with winglets, wingtip devices that reduce yet another type of drag and further improve aerodynamic efficiency. Many aircraft currently sport wingtips that are angled up for better fuel performance. Whitcomb received the National Medal of Science from President Richard Nixon in 1973, the U.S. Air Force Exceptional Service medal in 1955, the first National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' (NASA's predecessor) Distinguished Service Medal in 1956, the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1959 and the National Aeronautics Association's Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy in 1974. The engineer also was inducted into the National Inventors' Hall of Fame in 2003, the National Academy of Engineering in 1976 for his pioneering research in the aerodynamic design of high performance aircraft, and the Paul E. Garber First Flight Shrine at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in North Carolina. Whitcomb's alma mater, Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, awarded him an honorary doctorate and its presidential medal. Being inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame along with Whitcome are well-known aviation artist Keith Ferris, female aviation pioneer Geraldine Cobb, and the late Elwood Quesada, an Air Force general and pilot who in 1929 helped develop and demonstrate air-to-air refueling and was the first commander of the USAF Tactical Air Command and the first head of the Federal Aviation Administration. The ceremonies will held at the Dayton Convention Center in Dayton, Ohio.

RELEASE: 12-349 NASA ADMINISTRATOR RECEIVES TUSKEGEE AIRMEN SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION MEMORIAL AWARD

WASHINGTON -- The Tuskegee Airmen Scholarship Foundation presented NASA Administrator Charles Bolden with the Gen. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle Memorial Award at the organization's Gold Medal Gala Thursday in Los Angeles. Bolden is the first recipient of this award, which honors Gen. Doolittle's leadership as a founding board member of what began as the Tuskegee Airmen Scholarship Fund. The foundation presented the award to Bolden, a retired Marine Corps major general, for his outstanding military service, expert management as NASA's 12th administrator and qualities of leadership that Gen. Doolittle practiced. "I am honored to accept this award because my journey has been inspired by the example of courage and dedication against long odds that the Tuskegee aviators represent," Bolden said. "In addition to the example of my parents, I was fortunate to follow in the footsteps of the Tuskegee Airmen and serve my country as a Marine, an astronaut and now as head of NASA."

RELEASE: 12-353 NASA'S SWIFT SATELLITE DISCOVERS A NEW BLACK HOLE IN OUR GALAXY

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Swift satellite recently detected a rising tide of high-energy X-rays from a source toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The outburst, produced by a rare X-ray nova, announced the presence of a previously unknown stellar-mass black hole. "Bright X-ray novae are so rare that they're essentially once-a-mission events and this is the first one Swift has seen," said Neil Gehrels, the mission's principal investigator, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This is really something we've been waiting for." An X-ray nova is a short-lived X-ray source that appears suddenly, reaches its emission peak in a few days and then fades out over a period of months. The outburst arises when a torrent of stored gas suddenly rushes toward one of the most compact objects known, either a neutron star or a black hole. The rapidly brightening source triggered Swift's Burst Alert Telescope twice on the morning of Sept. 16, and once again the next day. Named Swift J1745-26 after the coordinates of its sky position, the nova is located a few degrees from the center of our galaxy toward the constellation Sagittarius. While astronomers do not know its precise distance, they think the object resides about 20,000 to 30,000 light-years away in the galaxy's inner region. Ground-based observatories detected infrared and radio emissions, but thick clouds of obscuring dust have prevented astronomers from catching Swift J1745-26 in visible light. The nova peaked in hard X-rays -- energies above 10,000 electron volts, or several thousand times that of visible light -- on Sept. 18, when it reached an intensity equivalent to that of the famous Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant that serves as a calibration target for high-energy observatories and is considered one of the brightest sources beyond the solar system at these energies. Even as it dimmed at higher energies, the nova brightened in the lower-energy, or softer, emissions detected by Swift's X-ray Telescope, a behavior typical of X-ray novae. By Wednesday, Swift J1745-26 was 30 times brighter in soft X-rays than when it was discovered and it continued to brighten. "The pattern we're seeing is observed in X-ray novae where the central object is a black hole. Once the X-rays fade away, we hope to measure its mass and confirm its black hole status," said Boris Sbarufatti, an astrophysicist at Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy, who currently is working with other Swift team members at Penn State in University Park, Pa. The black hole must be a member of a low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) system, which includes a normal, sun-like star. A stream of gas flows from the normal star and enters into a storage disk around the black hole. In most LMXBs, the gas in the disk spirals inward, heats up as it heads toward the black hole, and produces a steady stream of X-rays. But under certain conditions, stable flow within the disk depends on the rate of matter flowing into it from the companion star. At certain rates, the disk fails to maintain a steady internal flow and instead flips between two dramatically different conditions -- a cooler, less ionized state where gas simply collects in the outer portion of the disk like water behind a dam, and a hotter, more ionized state that sends a tidal wave of gas surging toward the center. "Each outburst clears out the inner disk, and with little or no matter falling toward the black hole, the system ceases to be a bright source of X-rays," said John Cannizzo, a Goddard astrophysicist. "Decades later, after enough gas has accumulated in the outer disk, it switches again to its hot state and sends a deluge of gas toward the black hole, resulting in a new X-ray outburst." This phenomenon, called the thermal-viscous limit cycle, helps astronomers explain transient outbursts across a wide range of systems, from protoplanetary disks around young stars, to dwarf novae -- where the central object is a white dwarf star -- and even bright emission from supermassive black holes in the hearts of distant galaxies. Swift, launched in November 2004, is managed by Goddard Space Flight Center. It is operated in collaboration with Penn State, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., with international collaborators in the United Kingdom and Italy and including contributions from Germany and Japan.

RELEASE: 12-354 NASA AND INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS APPROVE YEAR-LONG SPACE STATION STAY

WASHINGTON -- NASA and its international partners have announced an agreement to send two crew members to the International Space Station on a one-year mission designed to collect valuable scientific data needed to send humans to new destinations in the solar system. The crew members, one American astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut, will launch and land in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and are scheduled to begin their voyage in spring 2015. The space station serves as a laboratory for technological demonstrations and scientific research, including experiments that improve understanding of how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space. Data from a year-long expedition also will help inform assumptions about crew performance and health, and will help reduce the risks associated with future exploration. "In order for us to eventually move beyond low Earth orbit, we need to better understand how humans adapt to long-term spaceflight," said Michael Suffredini, International Space Station program manager. "The space station serves as a vital scientific resource for teaching us those lessons, and this yearlong expedition aboard the complex will help us move closer to those journeys." During the 12 years of permanent human presence aboard the space station, scientists and researchers have gained valuable, and often surprising, data on the effects of microgravity on bone density, muscle mass, strength, vision and other aspects of human physiology. This year-long stay will allow for greater analysis of these effects and trends. "We have gained new knowledge about the effects of spaceflight on the human body from the scientific research conducted on the space station, and it is the perfect time to test a one-year expedition aboard the orbital laboratory," said Julie Robinson, NASA's program scientist for the International Space Station. "What we will gain from this expedition will influence the way we structure our human research plans in the future." The expedition also will serve as a test bed for future exploration technologies. Those innovative technologies, the logistics of the trip to and from the space station and the selection of the crew will be announced at a future time.